According to the recent B2B Technology Content Marketing 2016: Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends—North America report, published by The Content Marketing Institute, the majority of B2B technology marketers polled share a common obstacle:

“62% say producing engaging content is their greatest content marketing challenge.”       

For most of us B2B marketers, this comes as no surprise. Limited internal resources and budgets can make it challenging to sustain a strong social media presence. Before exhausting all of your internal content assets, consider augmenting your content marketing strategy with relevant external resources.

Highlighted below are a few suggestions to help get you started.

RSS feeds

Subscribing to RSS feeds from top technology news sources will enable you to stay on top of the latest trends and emerging technology, while finding great content to share. Some good options include TechCrunch, New York Times |Technology and CNET.

Social networks

Searching social media networks including YouTube, Twitter, SlideShare, Vine, LinkedIn and more—by trending hashtags or specific topics—will result in many relevant options to choose from.

Industry news sources

Tracking breaking news and reading up on best practices will expand your knowledgebase and empower you to demonstrate thought leadership in your social networks. Many websites, including CRN, Fast Company and Business 2 Community, post fresh content throughout the day.

Your customers

If you are not following your customers on social media, you should be. Doing so demonstrates your interest in learning more about their business and celebrating their success. It also exposes you to new content. Reaching out to these connections to request a guest blog post or customer success story can result in new assets for you both.

Analyst blogs

While you may not have the kind of budget needed to purchase analyst reports, you can still leverage industry analyst content. Many analyst groups, including Forrester and Gartner, maintain blogs that are full of interesting perspectives, technology reviews and industry insights.

Social media marketing software

If you find that you can’t keep up with your social media presence, consider investing in social media marketing software, such as Hootsuite or Buffer. This type of solution enables you to connect your company’s Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Google+ and other social media pages to the system where you can schedule and reply to posts, monitor messages, aggregate data and find new content to share.

It’s true that creating custom content for your social media marketing campaigns is very effective for capturing inbound leads, but it is also time-consuming. Leveraging external content sources, such as those outlined above, will help you fill the gaps in your content marketing strategy and keep your social media feeds fresh—and full.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise and HP Inc. partners:

If you are new to social marketing or are engaged and looking for new content, Hewlett Packard Enterprise and HP Inc. provide a wealth of SEO-optimized, engaging social content in the Social Media Kits, available in Hewlett Packard Enterprise and HP Inc.’s Content Marketing Zone. Posting this content can easily help you amplify your social presence and brand you as a thought leader for Hewlett Packard Enterprise and HP Inc. solutions. If you need help getting your hands on this dynamic content, give us a call or send an email to contact@partnerdemand.com. We will be happy to help you find it. Follow us on twitter @PartnerDemand